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Today I got around to visiting the site of my accident, which I had intended to do last weekend. I didn’t want to commit the time needed for a 35-40 mile bike ride, so most of my journey was by BART, with about 11 miles of biking round trip between the station and the site of the accident.

To the extent that this trip had a purpose, it was to see whether the chewed-up pavement had been repaired, and it was this question that left me in some suspense as I meandered my way through the hills of Oakland to my destination, Skyline Boulevard and Grass Valley Road. This time, I approached the spot riding uphill along Grass Valley Road, opposite the previous times I’d been to the spot. A good distance away, the pavement was smooth and clearly relatively new, but when I got closer to the site I found myself on old pavement again.

As I pedaled up the last hill near the spot where I had fallen, I saw a cyclist approach in the opposite direction. He bounced up and down a few times as he rounded the turn, thus breaking my suspense but fortunately not his jaw.* Soon enough, I could see directly that the pavement hadn’t changed significantly since I was there in July.

It’s certainly not good pavement, but it’s not the worst I’ve seen. There’s actually a whole block in particular that I ride over pretty much every day, which is probably all a bit worse. It’s also downhill (at least in one direction), but it isn’t on a turn, and (on account of the whole block being bad), I’ve always taken it very slowly.

I don’t know whether the city of Oakland has decided that they won’t fix this or if they just haven’t gotten to it yet. The city certainly has had its share of financial difficulties, so they may not be able to afford to fix this kind of thing these days. As I understand, because they have been notified of the hazard, they are now liable for subsequent accidents caused by the damaged pavement. Of course, there are also signs warning people to take the turn slowly (without mentioning the road hazard), so that might reduce their liability.

I’ll write about the relevant law some time soon. That’s now two posts about law I’ve promised to write. Yawn.

*Let’s just say I’m practicing for a bad syllepsis competition, in case I should ever find one.

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I have to begin with a confession. When I wrote about my accident, I wasn’t entirely sure that everything I was saying was true. I didn’t say anything that I knew to be false, but I didn’t remember all of the details of how I had fallen. When I had no information about something, I didn’t say anything, but there were a couple of statements I made that were guesses based on what I did remember and what seemed to be the best information at the time.

For example, I wrote that I had been taking the downhill stretches faster than I was accustomed, and claimed that this was the cause of my accident. It’s true that I had taken some downhill stretches faster than I would have when riding alone, but I never had any specific recollection of going fast down the particular hill where the accident took place. When I stated that I had been going faster at the time of the accident, I was extrapolating based on what I did remember in a way that seemed to explain why I had fallen. Similarly, when I said that my bike crossed over the center line in the road, I didn’t have any specific recollection of that having happened at that particular turn. I had some recollection of it having happened somewhere, and it seemed reasonable to conclude that it was the place where I had crashed.

Anyway, I needed to make that confession because I revisited the scene of the accident this morning, and what I saw there led me to question both of the claims discussed in the preceding paragraph.

As I approached the turn where the accident took place, I could see that there were plenty of signs warning of a difficult turn. First was something painted on the street by a well-meaning amateur.

I stopped at the corner to reflect on things and examine the scene for a while. Obviously, with the accident having happened 90 days earlier, there were no visible traces of my accident. However, one patch of pavement did catch my attention.

With the shade and an unfavorable angle, the photo doesn’t adequately display the magnitude of the hazard that this presents to bicyclists. In particular, it’s hard to see in the picture how deep some of the ridges were. Here’s another shot, which still doesn’t really do it justice, but it provides a little bit more information.

In the hours since my return to the site, I’ve become increasingly convinced that the condition of the pavement played some role in my accident. The evidence is far from conclusive, but my biggest objection to that theory was easily resolved. This objection was that the cracked pavement was only found on the side where I was supposed to be riding, and I remembered crossing over the center line. As I mentioned previously, though, that memory of crossing the line may not be from this particular spot. Moreover, even if it is from that spot, it’s possible that I lost control on the broken pavement and then crossed over the line and fell.

I’ve spent a good amount of time examining my injuries and the scratches that the bike acquired in the accident, trying to figure out exactly how I fell and whether that might convey any information about the quality of the pavement I was on. The main way that such information might arise is if the bike were scratched in places that wouldn’t touch smooth pavement when I fell on it, but might have been able to touch pavement that was sufficiently uneven. Indeed, there are some scratches in places that seem like they shouldn’t have made contact with the road, but it’s not clear to me that the scratches could have come from falling on the ridged pavement either. The only other possibility seems to be that these scratches predated the accident (but I didn’t notice them until afterwards) or that they were acquired while the bike was at the fire station.

Since the morning, I’ve also had flashbacks of falling from my bike towards badly cracked pavement. I suspect that this isn’t an actual memory but something that my mind has fabricated to support my new theory of the cause of the accident.

Of course, all of this speculation on what happened that day has only minimal practical value. Determining the cause of the accident isn’t going to change the fact that it happened. Nor would it change the fact that the worst effects of the accident have, by all indications, passed. The only possible benefit from knowing why I fell would seem to be liability purposes, and not only does it seem unlikely that I’d be able to build a strong enough case, but I have no interest in pursuing litigation against a city that is broke when my insurance companies seem to have picked up most of the tab for my bills. I’d much rather see money go to fixing road hazards, which is why I reported this spot on the East Bay Bicycle Coalition’s hazard reporting site. Much to their credit, Oakland’s Public Works Agency apparently does a good job of fixing hazards quickly after they are reported, according to an article in the East Bay Express.

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This morning, before catching a bus to the office, I revisited the scene of my accident, thanks to the wonders of Google Street View. I hadn’t expected to be able to find it, partly because I wasn’t sure of the location, and partly because I didn’t expect to remember the scenery. However, I did have a map of the route for the ride I was on that day, and the accident scene turned out to be in the place along the route that I guessed first. The scenery, it turned out, was actually quite memorable, perhaps because I spent plenty of time staring at it while I waited to be taken to the hospital.

The most surprising thing about the scenery, aside from my memory of the view, was that it looks like it really wasn’t much of a hill I was coming down. I knew it wasn’t one of the steeper hills I’ve experienced, but I was still surprised at just how slight the incline was. Although the possibility occurred to me that incline may have just been difficult to detect in the pictures, Google’s terrain map suggests that the grade might be a little above 5%. My walking map of Oakland puts the grade in the 6% to 9% range. This is not steep enough that it should have been problematic had I been paying full attention to what I was doing, so I have to suspect that I was not.

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Just under two weeks ago, I fell off of my bicycle and sustained a number of injuries, the most serious of which was a mandibular fracture. I plan to use this blog to share various musings related to these injuries, as well as things I’ve learned that might be helpful to other people in similar situations.

At various times, it may be helpful for a reader to know that I am a vegan and a graduate student in mathematics. I suspect that anybody who knows me and finds this blog would recognize that I am the author, but I don’t plan on identifying myself at this time.

Obviously, I’m getting something of a late start on this blog, with the accident nearly two weeks behind me already. I’ve been meaning to start this blog for some time now, but life has been busy. I have quite a number of entries that I’d like to write, and I plan on back-dating some posts according to when I first thought to write them.

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This afternoon, I completed an insurance form for the cycling club. I don’t really understand what it’s for. I don’t see why there would be an insurance policy that would pay anybody other than me (the club didn’t incur any costs from the accident), but I’ve already signed a waiver freeing the club from any liability.

The form wasn’t particularly remarkable except for two things. First, it had checkboxes for 21 body parts, and I was to indicate which had been injured. I ended up checking just under half of them (10). However, most of the injuries were very minor, such as light scratches on the front of my neck and my right ear. The second thing was that I was asked to indicate whether my injuries were minor or serious, and I wasn’t sure what the answer was. While a broken jaw certainly isn’t fun, plenty of people recover from it, and relatively quickly. I assumed that there was some serious legal definition of “serious injury,” and I looked around and found that I was right, at least in the State of New York. A Google search turned up a page on the New York serious injury threshold:

“Serious injury” means a personal injury which results in death; dismemberment; significant disfigurement; a fracture; loss of a fetus; permanent loss of use of a body organ, member, function or system; permanent consequential limitation of use of a body organ or member; significant limitation of use of a body function or system, or a medically determined injury or impairment of a non permanent nature which prevents the injured person from performing substantially all of the material acts which constitute such person’s usual and customary daily activities for not less that ninety days during the one hundred eighty days immediately following the occurrence of the injury or impairment.

I’m nowhere near New York, and neither is the insurer, but this was good enough for me. While most of that wouldn’t describe any of my injuries, I definitely have a fracture.

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Note: Recent events have led me to doubt some of what is written here. For an explanation, see this post.

I woke up this morning faced with a decision. I had planned on going on my first ride with a local cycling club that I had joined, but a couple of things had given me second thoughts. First, my seasonal allergies were flaring up, and I was concerned that this might interfere with my ability to ride my bike. The other problem was that I didn’t really have proper cycling attire. I had clothing that I was comfortable wearing on a bicycle, but it wouldn’t make me look like a cyclist. I actually bought a pair of cycling shorts yesterday, but I was overwhelmed by the price and choice of shirts and decided against buying one. I’m always more than a bit shy about introducing myself to new groups of people, and looking different wasn’t going to make it any easier. After a few minutes of deliberation, though, I decided to put on a shirt I had that was made of some sort of athletic fabric and go.

When I arrived at the starting point of the ride, I could see that my choice of clothing wasn’t the only way in which I stood out. I was also one of only two cyclists without drop handlebars. When I had purchased my bike two months earlier, I had balked at the price of drop handlebars, opting instead for a cheaper commuter bike, which I had come to like very much. I wasn’t bothered by the fact that my bike was probably the cheapest one there; it was just that the difference in construction was another thing that made me feel I didn’t belong.

After we started moving, I became conscious of yet another way in which I didn’t fit in, although this one was decidedly more subtle. I’d always been a cautious bicyclist, and so I’d tend to use my brakes as I’d go down hills. As I braked my way down the hills, I found that the other cyclists were pedaling past me. Uphill was a different story. Living in the Berkeley Hills, I had biked uphill almost every day for several months. Over the course of these months, I had managed to cut my evening commute (the uphill direction) in half. With my youth and my comfort with hills, I found myself passing many of the other cyclists on the uphill.

As the ride progressed, I began taking the downhill stretches a bit faster. I started out braking less, and then even started pedaling a bit. I didn’t feel a need to be going faster than anybody else. It was just my paranoid fear of not fitting in. In fact, I still found myself taking the hills a bit slower than many of the others.

About a third of the way through the ride 43 mile ride, I neared the bottom of a hill along a quiet road. The road veered off to the right, but I did not. My bicycle crossed over the center line of the road, and I tried to turn back onto the right side of the road. The next thing I remember, I had fallen and gotten up again, and people were crowding around with concern.

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About

I'm Adam Merberg. I wrote this blog after I had a bicycle accident and thought it might be useful to document the various injuries (a broken jaw among them) that resulted. If you have questions about anything you read here, feel free to email me. These days, I don't update this blog often because I consider myself to be fully recovered, but I do try to reply to comments and emails.

Please note that this blog is not a substitute for professional medical advice or treatment. If you have reason to believe that you have broken your jaw, you should see a doctor.